Transcript

Mark Horstman: Now to another growth area. At last count, the fish farming industry is booming. It's part of aquaculture, worth more than $700 million a year for Australia; driven by declining wild fish stocks and the world's taste for fresh fish.

In Scotland, Don Staniford works with the Salmon Farm Protest Group. He's been visiting Australia as an international campaigner on the environmental and health effects of sea cage fish farming. Annie Hastwell caught up with him in Adelaide at the end of his three-month tour.

Don Staniford: There's five fundamental flaws associated with farming kingfish, farming tuna, salmon in the sea. Firstly there's the waste problem: they're discharging untreated sewage effluent directly into the sea. Secondly there's escapes, thirdly there's diseases and parasites, and fourthly there are chemicals used to control diseases and parasites. But fifthly - what I call the fifth and the fatal flaw of fish farming - is the feed issue.

The feed supply for farmed tuna and farmed salmon and farmed kingfish is essentially wild fish. And not only is that depleted as in there's not plenty more fish in the sea any more; it's also contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. So I think that's the Achilles heel - the real fatal flaw that's going to blow sea cage aquaculture out of the water.

Annie Hastwell:Can you give an example of that, of what wild fish, and how they're used to feed the ones in cages?

Don Staniford: Farmed tuna, for example, they require twenty tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed tuna. so it's twenty-to-one. It's a false economy. It's biological nonsense. You're producing less fish from more fish, and it simply doesn't add up.

Annie Hastwell:What has your general impression been of Australia, though, when it comes to fish farming?

Don Staniford: It's been a real eye-opener. I'm really shocked and alarmed at how Australia is treating its marine environment - with a contempt. I went up to the Great Barrier Reef and there's new proposals there to have aquaculture on two-thirds of the Reef. So if Australia is willing to sacrifice the Great Barrier Reef - this international icon, this world heritage area - for the sake of aquaculture and development; really, it's willing to sacrifice everywhere else, you know. This is the case with South Australia with the tuna farming industry where you're sacrificing pristine marine areas for the sake of short-term economic gains and you've got tuna farming barons, millionaires, making vast quantities of money at the expense of food safety and the marine environment.

Annie Hastwell:Now I know that when you were in Brisbane you were labelled as an 'eco-terrorist' but in South Australia you've actually been dealing with the authorities and the tuna farmers on quite an equitable basis. What kind of relationship have you had?

Don Staniford: I think with some fish farmers the knee-jerk reaction, 'eco-terrorism', is one of those reactions I got from Brisbane. But I'm more of an eco-tourist. I'm looking around at the industry and here in South Australia it's been great that I've been shown around a barramundi farm, a kingfish farm and a tuna farm. So I think the industry must be applauded for being open and transparent. But I'd still argue that the more I look at the industry, it's rather like opening a can of worms, and we're seeing problems with escapes of kingfish, with diseases and parasites on tuna and kingfish farms. And a lot of the problems we're seen in the northern hemisphere with salmon are now materialising and manifesting themselves here in South Australia. It really is an industry in crisis.

Annie Hastwell:Do you get the feeling that the industry's aware of the kind of cautionary tales that happen elsewhere in the world, though, and that they're trying do things better?

Don Staniford: I think they're aware of the problems, but I think there's a combination of naivety and arrogance that it's not going to happen in South Australia. But I think problems that are now showing in kingfish we've seen in salmon. It might be a different species; it might be a different country, but some of the problems are exactly the same. They're still discharging wast directly into the sea. There are still escapes. There are still diseases and parasites and there's still chemicals. And ultimately the fatal flaw is the contaminants in the feed. So I think we're seeing a very similar problem.

Annie Hastwell:And do you feel as though you've been able to make some difference, in being here?

Don Staniford: I think it's certainly raised awareness. I've met people from the government through PIRSA, SARDI, DEH and EPA, and I've met the government agencies. I've met the industry. I've met fishing groups in Whyalla, for example, and they were very concerned at the expansion of the farming industry and the impact on wild fisheries. So I think I've raised awareness. I was in Adelaide fish market on Saturday and people are quite ignorant that the fish that they're buying is farmed. On sale in Adelaide market was barramundi, tuna, salmon, trout. These were all farmed species. And people don't really realise what they're buying is a fatty, contaminated farm product.

Farmed fish is a poor relation to wild fish, and I think we label fish whether it's wild or farmed, but in Australia, that's simply not the case at all. People are not being given informed choices about what fish they're buying. And I think we need to distinguish between fish farming that has no environmental impacts and fish farming that has severe environmental impacts. And I would argue that cage farming of carnivorous fish such as tuna, kingfish and salmon in the sea is inherently unsustainable and we should really stop that practice now.

Annie Hastwell:When you look at it on a globalised scale, in globalised industry, and we've obviously got seas around Australia that are still relatively rich in fish - is there a danger that we'll be colonised economically in that way, that there'll be people from all over the world farming fish in our waters?

Don Staniford: I think that's already happening. What we're seeing on a global basis, we're seeing - fish are being privatised - we're now doing more farming than wild fishing than ever before. Thirty years ago, for example, only five per cent of the fish that we buy in supermarkets was from farms. Now it's thirty-three per cent. A third of the fish that we get is from farming. And by 2020 they reckon that over half the fish that we get will be from fish farming operations. So we're seeing multi-national companies such as Monsanto, Unilever, BP - have all been in fish farming operations - and Mitsubishi as well, the Japanese car giant. We're seeing big companies investing in fish farming and they're transforming what used to be a common property resource with open access and free access for the general public, into a private property resource. So we're having profound social, environmental and economic impacts associated with that transition from a capture wild fisheries economy to a culture economy based on fish farming.

Annie Hastwell:And do you think that's happening in Australia?

Don Staniford: Thirty per cent of the fish that Australia produces is from farming already. That's set to expand. In the last decade aquaculture production in Australia trebled and the prediction from the government is that they want to treble again by 2010. So we're going to see more fish produced from farming and more privatisation of the industry, and that's not necessarily a good thing at all.